Oddcast episode
May 7, 2025
James Russell on the Hypnerotomachia in Esoteric Tradition
Sometimes the readers of an interesting book can be even more interesting than the book. In this episode we explore the marginalia in countless copies of Colonna’s enigmatic tome with James Russell, who spent his PhD studies thumbing through these treasures. In a conversation ranging from Sir Kenelm Digby to Aleister Crowley, we explore the esoteric Nachleben of the Hypnerotomachi Polifili.
Interview Bio:
Dr. James Russell is a historian of the book and of reading practices in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, based at Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona. James completed his doctorate at the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Durham University. He is interested in the reading experiences of those who engaged with esoteric and alchemical texts, especially as evidenced by their marginalia. His most recent article, “The Marginalia of Pope Alexander VII in a Vatican Copy of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili” appeared in the journal Ceræ (https://ceraejournal.com/volume-11-2024/).
Works Cited in this Episode:
Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. The Rule of Four. Dial, 2004 [a cheesy Da-Vinci-Code-bandwagon thriller].
Jean d’Espagnet. Enchyridion physicæ restitutæ, or, The summary of physicks recovered wherein the true harmony of nature is explained, and many errours of the ancient philosophers, by canons and certain demonstrations, are clearly evidenced and evinced. W. Bentley, London, 1651.
Umberto Eco. Opera aperta: forma e indetermininazione nelle poetiche contemporanee. La Nave di Teseo, Milan, 2023.
Linda Fierz-David. The Dream of Poliphilo: The Soul in Love. Spring Publications, Dallas, TX, 1987.
Owen Gingerich. The Book Nobody Read: In Pursuit of the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. Bloomsbury, 2004.
Joscelyn Godwin, ed. and trans. Francesco Colonna. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. Thames & Hudson, London, 1999.
Liane Lefaivre. Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997.
Javier Patiño Loira. The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe. University of Delaware Press, Newark, DE, 2024.
Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
François Rabelais. Les Cinq livres des faits et dits de Gargantua et Pantagruel. France, c. 1532–1564.
James Russell. ‘Many Other Things Worthy of Knowledge and Memory’: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its Annotators, 1499–1700. PhD thesis, Durham University, 2014. URL https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10757/.
Recommended Reading:
SHWEP James Russell on the Hypnerotomachia Recommended Reading
Themes
Alchemy, Aleister Crowley, Art of Memory, Carl Gustav Jung, Decknamen, Dreams, Esoteric Architecture, Francesco Colonna, Gardens, Geber, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Interview, Kenelm Digby, Liberal Arts, Macro, Martianus Capella, Plato, The Thoudand-and-One Nights
Paul McRandle
May 8, 2025
I’ve really enjoyed both episodes on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilia. Gérard de Nerval also makes extensive use of the work in Voyage en Orient (1851), his unreliable travel account and mystical voyage to Egypt and the Middle East. He includes an episode on the island of Cerigo (or Cythera), a place he never visited, drawing on it to describe a mass for Venus (specifically from ch.s xvii & xviii in the HP’s first book). According to the editors of Nerval’s O.C., he had access to the first edition of 1499 via Charles Nodier, whose final story, Franciscus Columna, Nerval drew from as well for his Hypnoerotomachia chapters. I haven’t read the HP, but it seems to have served as one of Nerval’s models for the entire travel account and, as a major work of dream literature, I suspect its impact on him is hard to over-estimate.
Earl Fontainelle
May 8, 2025
Hell, Yeah! Nerval is amazing, and will of course be featured in the podcast when the time comes. Great to know this about his relationship with the HP.